Immigrant Measure Still Backed by Gays

Advocates focused their fury on several Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, which considered more than 300 amendments to the bill, after the senators warned the chairman, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, that they would not vote for an amendment he wanted to introduce. The measure by Mr. Leahy, also a Democrat, would have allowed American citizens to seek permanent resident status — a document known as a green card — for a foreign same-sex partners.

But as the bill now moves to the Senate floor, the political damage from the episode for the Democrats — including senators who have been firm allies of gay causes like Mr. Leahy, Charles E. Schumer of New York and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois — may not be as severe as it first appeared. Gay rights advocates, stepping back from the loss, said the overhaul still contained many measures that could benefit gay immigrants, most of which came through the committee gantlet unscathed.

Other provisions that the committee agreed to add to the bill, dealing with asylum and immigration detention, had been the subject of vigorous lobbying by gay organizations.

The committee outcome was a relief for Republicans in the bipartisan group of eight senators that wrote the bill, who had said the same-sex amendment would cripple the entire measure. By fending it off, Republicans held on to crucial support from evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics.

“To try to redefine marriage within the immigration bill would mean the bill would fall apart,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican, told Mr. Leahy in the moments of high suspense last Tuesday evening before the Vermont senator announced his decision. Mr. Graham said support from conservative evangelical churches, which have put on an ambitious campaign to pass the overhaul, “made it possible for a guy like me to survive the emotional nature of this debate.”

One activist who had intensely mixed feelings about the committee’s results was Felipe Sousa-Rodriguez, co-director of Get Equal, an organization that seeks legal equality for gay people.

“I can’t deny my outrage when I felt betrayed,” said Mr. Sousa-Rodriguez, who said he had delivered thousands of petitions to Mr. Schumer’s Washington office just a week earlier.

But he said he was ready to push for the bill on the Senate floor, where lawmakers expect to take it up the week of June 10. “Many of my friends will benefit from the overall legislation,” he said.

Like many gay advocates, Mr. Sousa-Rodriguez, who was born in Brazil, sees the legislation from several angles. He is one of as many as 1.7 million young immigrants who were brought here illegally as children. Those immigrants would be eligible under the Senate bill for an accelerated five-year path to citizenship. They include a vocal contingent of youths who are gay.

But Mr. Sousa-Rodriguez is also legally married to an immigrant from Colombia, Juan, who is about to become an American citizen. If the same-sex amendment were to become law, Mr. Sousa-Rodriguez’s husband could seek a green card for him immediately, without waiting five years. In the Judiciary Committee debate, Mr. Leahy kept everyone, including his own staff, wondering until the final hour whether he would formally introduce the same-sex amendment. He had sponsored similar legislation many times in the Senate, and he left no doubt in his opening statement about his strong support for the provision.

But then he turned to the other senators on the committee, asking them for their views. In agonized comments the Democrats, also including Dianne Feinstein of California and Al Franken of Minnesota, replayed the Republican warnings that the measure would be a deal breaker.

According to several Senate aides, the Democrats were surprised and miffed that Mr. Leahy shifted the burden to them to nix the amendment.

“He did it in a way that made others walk the plank and kept his hands clean,” one Democratic aide said, “and that was not appreciated.”

In the end Mr. Leahy withheld his amendment, leaving open the option of introducing it later. The committee sent the bill to the Senate floor on a strong bipartisan vote.

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Immigrant debate just simmering pot of gamesmanship

WASHINGTON

Now that the immigration "crisis" has solved itself, this is the perfect time for Congress and the president to agree on a package of sensible, real-world reforms.

Yeah, right, and it's also the perfect time for pigs to grow wings and take flight.

Perhaps this week's most significant news was a report from the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center showing that net migration from Mexico to the United States has slowed to a halt and may actually have reversed. That's right: There may be more people leaving this country to live in Mexico than leaving Mexico to live here.

End of the "crisis" -- which wasn't really a crisis at all, except in overwhelmed border-state cities such as Phoenix. There's no longer the slightest excuse for histrionics about the alleged threat to our way of life from invading hordes intent on -- shudder -- working hard and raising their families.

Why the turnaround? The report cites "many factors, including the weakened U.S. job and housing- construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, the long-term decline in Mexico's birthrates and broader economic conditions in Mexico."

To me, all that makes perfect sense. Whether they have papers or not, immigrants are rational. As a general rule, they don't come here to commit crimes; they could do that at home if they wanted. They don't come here to laze around and enjoy government benefits because, well, what benefits would those be? They come to work.

But the U.S. economy fell off a cliff, meaning there is less work to be had. Mexico's economy, while not unscathed, is improving. And the Obama administration has dramatically stepped up border enforcement while carrying out a record number of deportations. Suddenly, both for Mexicans who considered immigrating legally and those who might have been tempted to come without documents, the risk-reward equation has changed.

According to the Pew report, there are an estimated 11million illegal immigrants in the United States; six out of 10 are Mexican. The number of immigrants without papers has actually been falling. Wouldn't this be a perfect time to take a deep breath and start talking about reasonable ways to engineer a more rational immigration policy?

Yes, it would, but don't hold your breath. Apparently, we're going to have a lot of shouting without actually trying to find a solution. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of Arizona's "driving while brown" law that instructs police to challenge and, if necessary, apprehend anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant. The law forbids racial profiling, but the truth is that it guarantees profiling.

The administration argues that the state law usurps the federal government's prerogative to set immigration policy. The court is expected to decide the case this summer, and the ruling's impact may be less practical -- since illegal immigration, I repeat, is already on the decline -- than political.

Democrats will react with thunderous outrage if the court upholds the Arizona law -- but if you stand outside the back room where the pollsters and campaign strategists work, you might hear the slapping of high fives. Anything that draws attention to the Republican Party's extremist position on immigration will only reinforce a tendency that Mitt Romney recently characterized as "doom" -- the headlong rush of Latino voters into a waiting Democratic embrace.

Barack Obama won a remarkable two-thirds of the Latino vote in 2008. This year, according to the polls, he's running even stronger among the biggest minority group in the country. If Republicans don't find a way to win more Latino support, Obama will be hard to beat. In the long term, if Latinos become a more-or-less permanent Democratic constituency like African-Americans have, the GOP will inexorably go the way of the Whigs.

So, that is what this year's immigration "debate" will be about: how to reap political gain and avoid political loss.

We don't need to build a giant wall along the Rio Grande; Obama has already "hardened" the border. We need a Reagan-style amnesty that would allow the great majority of undocumented immigrants to stay, along with reforms that give Mexicans and others a realistic hope of being able to come here someday.

Assuming they want to.

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